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Short Film Review: Visitors (2021) by Kenichi Ugana

"I feel like I am being watched"

Having already a succesful run in a plethora of festivals in Europe and the US including Fantasporto and Slamdance, “” is another work by that highlights his command of the medium, particularly in genre paths.

“Visitors” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative

Haruka, Nana, and Takanori visit the house of Sota, a band member who has not given any sign of life for quite some time. The house looks particularly run-down with newspapers covering every window, while Sota seems even more strange, looking a mess and acting like nothing is going on. As he calmly offers them tea, one of the girls steps into a green goo and transforms into a head-spinning, bloodthirsty demon.

Kenichi Ugana “plays” with two aspects. The first one focuses on hikikomori, with Sota acting like an archetypical one, in a fashion, though, that is the main source of comedy in the short, as his disconnect from what is happening around him is actually hilarious, particularly in way Ugana uses his presence for jump-scares. The second is the survival horror one, with the director building the terror gradually, first solely through sound, and then through both sound and image, as the movie takes a rather bloody, but also absurd and still funny turn.

In that fashion, the job done in the technical aspect of the movie is top notch, with Yusuke Mogi’s sound, Masashi Komino’s editing, and most of all, Miyuki Wakamatsu’s VFX, resulting in a series of truly memorable, rather grotesque scenes, with the rotating head, the head on the leg, the chainsaw, and the repeated hits almost every character involved takes, being a true joy to watch.

Lastly, the finale cements the whole approach Ugana implemented here in the best fashion, with ending the movie in the most fitting way.

“Visitors” is an excellent horror short, one of the best we have seen during the last few years, and yet another testament to Ugana’s directorial abilities.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

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